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About This Blog
Michael Merschel: Michael Merschel edits books coverage for The Dallas Morning News. August 2010
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Here is a very 21st century moment. Neighborsgo.com has story about a Coppell man who says he has set a record for the world's longest published novel. The author himself "doesn't claim his 2.5 million-word novel is the world's greatest, only the longest." And thus begins another week in modern arts commentary: A self-published novel, notable only for its size, becomes a self-reported news article, which becomes a blog post for a bleary-eyed editor on a Monday morning. It can only get better from here, right? Archived Comments |
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A self-reported news article about a self-published novel – and now, a self-posted commentary on a blogger’s reaction to a self-reported news article about a self-published novel. This is the 21st century for sure! But, uh – “Marienbad My Love” is notable only for its size? Did you really write that? Harsh, Mike. I submit that my novel is also notable for the degree of loathing it has generated in the reading public. Anybody can be boring. But I knew I was onto something when I received these comments last year during the “First Chapters” novel contest on gather.com: “The incoherent ramblings of an insane mind … I am not sure there is even a classification for this one … long stretches of surrealism, where we are in this character's head and not grounded in any recognizable reality...What was that?! Was this person using drugs or what? … I decided to be generous and give you a one, rather than a zero… I am so completely confused. I have no idea what's going on, what's real and what the narrator is imagining … It's terrible.” But you know who hates “Marienbad My Love” the most? Mark Sheldon, my alter ego and protagonist of “Marienbad My Love.” He recently broke down the fourth wall to post his own objections: “Congratulations, Mark Leach. I read today on ‘Texas Pages’ that the only thing notable about your novel is its size. And still you smile, that clueless, William Hung smile. Why so pleased? If you really wanted to create a noteworthy science fiction novel, then why no swords or elves? Why no Roman centurions? No, you thought you were too good. Only a hack would write genre, right? Instead of straight science fiction, you decided to employ the ‘conventions’ of SF. ‘It's all for EFFECT,’ you explain. And why did you have to make me so perverse? After all, I am an autobiographical character. What do my perversions say about you, the novelist? ‘You are only an exaggerated version of me,’ you say, ‘exaggerated for comic effect.’ Fine. Here is what I say: I hate this, being a fictional creation trapped in this abomination of a novel. Experimental? Stream of consciousness? Metafiction? How about ‘crap’? Now that ‘Marienbad My Love’ has been unleashed on the world, surely the Apocalypse is not far behind.”